but I hope that doesn't happen. Don't get me wrong, I love KenPom's system as a method of evaluating the true strength of teams (won my tournament pool last year by picking the team ranked higher in KenPom to win), but I think the attributes he uses to rate teams differ from what the selection committee should use to determine tournament-worthiness. The committee should be evaluating teams based on who they played, where they played them, and who they beat, not the per-possession efficiency of a team.

Are tickets already available for these games? If so, I bet a ton of Spartan fans have already purchased them in anticipation of MIchigan State playing there. I'm sure their favorite pastime (cheering against Michigan) would be a perfectly acceptable consolation prize.

He's only "blocking Hopkins" in a sense that, once Hopkins hits him, they're engaged and there's no way of him getting out to another defender. Hopkins could have avoided right off the bat, but chose not to.

So you're saying it's possible that Michigan was spending a blocker on a guy who was ignoring the running back in an effort to contain Denard when there was no chance that Robinson would keep it? That's even better!

I don't think that's the point is to dismiss Paterno's accomplishments as much as the arrogance that accompanied it. The whole Grand Experiment idea reeks of the belief that they were the only program to do this. Eliminating Penn State would've reduced the number of opportunities, but it wouldn't have eliminated all of them.

It's not a true home game, but to treat this as the same thing as the trips to Oregon or Washington is disingenuous as well, as Michigan is giving up a home simply because Jerry Jones was willing to give the athletic department a huge amount of money.

I'm sure there will be a legal challenge and I'll be interested to see how it turns out, but I'm pretty sure the NFL is going to argue that this is about the way the contracts are structured, not the amount they are for. There was no collusion to curb spending that year, but Dallas and Washington treated it as a loophole to circumvent any future cap.

They normally try to place the #1 seeds in the regional closest to their campus, with overall #1 getting placed first and overall #4 getting what's left at the end (unless one of them is a host). From there, they generally try to maintain bracket integrity (overall #1 with #8, #9, and #16, etc.) as best they can while following the rules that:

Host teams must be placed in their home regional.

Avoid interconference matchups in the first round.

Given those statements, I kinda sorta disagree with mfan's belief that they'd put Michigan in St. Paul. I think they'd place Michigan in Green Bay since it's closer. That would then allow them to place Duluth in St. Paul, which is a much shorter trip for their fan base.